


Purveyor of Theatrical Snacks

by inigosolo



Category: Horrible Histories
Genre: Awkward Sexual Situations, First Time, M/M, Semi-Public Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-24
Updated: 2012-05-24
Packaged: 2017-11-05 22:32:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/411716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inigosolo/pseuds/inigosolo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for DoreyG, who promted this on the hhanon kink meme (long may it live on):</p>
<p>Refreshment man!Larry/Victoria's servant, proms<br/>So, I know Victoria's serving man had a name BUT I cannot remember it for the life of me so, um, please forgive?<br/>But these two captured me in a faintly odd way so I shall continue! Maybe they get talking while poor Victoria is crying, maybe that talking gets on to flirting, maybe that flirting develops into... Other things, yes~. And all in the setting of the Royal Albert Hall!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Purveyor of Theatrical Snacks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DoreyG](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoreyG/gifts).



 

Fortescue had known he should have burnt the invitation to this bloody Prom. Attending a concert with her Majesty at the Royal _Albert_ Hall was just asking for trouble.   
  
He tried to exit the royal box discreetly to give the Queen a little privacy. She sometimes needed ten minutes or more to get herself back together once she started with the crying, and this blasted concert was giving her far too many reminders of her long-dead husband.   
  
He closed the door firmly behind him, and was just turning around to stand guard when something hard and wooden crashed into his ribcage, winding him.   
  
It turned out to be the eager serving boy from earlier, with his absurdly oversized snack tray. He bounced back from Fortescue's much larger frame and stumbled, dazed, into the opposite wall of the corridor, losing his red hat in the process.   
  
“My goodness, young man. I know the concept of manners has died out in your time, but you could at least look where you're going...” Fortescue said in his most witheringly lofty tone, once he had his breath back.   
  
The young man – what was his name, something 'Short'? - looked mortified. He was spluttering, presumably trying to get out some form of apology, and his face and neck had flooded with vivid colour to match his red apron.   
  
Fortescue felt a tug of pity – he wasn't a bad little chap, really, they just didn't teach people how to serve properly these days – but this was entirely overshadowed when he felt something very cold and rather wet coming into contact with his left nipple.   
  
Young Mr. Short was pointing, open-mouthed, at Fortescue's previously immaculate waistcoat, now covered in the pinkish glop that had been balancing on his tray.   
  
Fortescue, of course, had been extraordinarily well trained, and so was able to keep a straight, composed facial expression, even as the _bloody cold_ stuff slowly spread, soaking into the fabric around his navel, and his abdominal muscles contracted with shock.   
  
“Her Majesty's raspberry ripple ice cream, I presume?” He stated stiffly, trying very hard not to glare at the young man.  
  
“Oh, sir... Oh, I am so, so sorry... Oh God. She won't...” Mr. Short lowered his voice to a strained whisper. “She won't, er... have my head chopped off, will she?”  
  
 _No, but I might_ thought Fortescue. He shook his head at the horrified young man.   
  
“She doesn't need to know about this.” He told Mr. Short, and winced visibly as a trickle of ice cream reached the top of his breeches.   
  
“Oh no, your lovely waistcoat!” Exclaimed Mr. Short. He put down his ridiculous tray and stepped forward, immediately attempting to divest Fortescue of his brocaded jacket.   
  
Fortescue stiffened, but Mr. Short implored him. “Mr. Fortescue, you can't get any ice cream on your fine coat as well, let me...” And Fortescue found himself being stripped of both jacket and waistcoat – and in a public corridor, no less.   
  
“Mr. Short, this is improper...”   
  
The young man blinked up at him in confusion, and then seemed to understand.   
  
“Oh, I see... Of course, you're Victorian, aren't you...” (Fortescue couldn't quite stop his eyes from rolling at that.) “Erm... I know, come with me a minute... Uh, please? Sir?”  
  
Fortescue wanted to protest, but he couldn't think of much worse that Victoria (or another lady) coming out into the corridor and seeing him in this state of undress, so he let the bumbling refreshment boy lead him to a side-door a little way down the corridor, marked “Staff Only”.

 

*****

  
Young Mr. Short hung up Fortescue's coat in the staff room, then manhandled him into a small water closet, where he laid Fortescue's messy waistcoat on the wash basin, and then, most extraordinarily of all, turned and began to unbutton Fortescue's shirt.   
  
For a moment the royal butler couldn't form words, and when he did they came out more harshly than he had intended.   
  
“What, may I ask, are you doing?”  
  
Mr. Short blinked at him.   
  
“Oh, I'm... Well, your shirt's ruined, isn't it? I can at least dry it for you.”   
  
“And you for some reason believe I am incapable of removing my own shirt?”   
  
Mr. Short gawped, and suffered from that very vivid blush again, and Fortescue felt another tug of pity, along with a niggling sense that he was missing something.   
  
Another awkward moment staring at Mr. Short's flushed face, and he thought he understood.   
  
“Ah, I see. You're a Mandrake.”  
  
“A... A _what_?”   
  
“A Mandrake. I was told it's very common in your time – you even talk about it openly...”  
  
“W-what? You mean... _Gay_?! I'm not... I don't...”  
  
Fortescue finished off removing his shirt and held it out to Mr. Short so that he could dry it.   
  
But Mr. Short did not reach for it. His sunken blue eyes travelled around Fortescue's bared, ice-cream smeared torso at length. His mouth was hanging open again. A small spark of warmth flickered in Fortescue's abdomen.   
  
“Oh, you're...” Mr. Short began, but what he was Fortescue never found out because the young man changed tack. “Listen, seriously, mate, I'm like, 85% straight, I... OK, there was this one time at sixth form, but it was just a kiss... And I though he was a she...”  
  
Not understanding much of this, Fortescue thrust the shirt towards Mr. Short again, and this time the lad caught on.   
  
“Oh, yeah, the thing...”   
  
Fortescue had to wonder if the boy was touched in the head, especially as he held the damp shirt up to a strange box mounted on the wall of the water closet.   
  
When the strange box suddenly began to roar and spew hot air into the room, Fortescue jumped violently. This in turn made Mr. Short jump. He quickly explained that the box was called a hand-dryer, and was meant to make that sound. He held Fortescue's shirt under the jet of hot air and it began to dry out, although now it was a mottled pale pink down most of the front.  
  
Still, if he managed to do something with his waistcoat, no one would be able to see the stained shirt anyway. He pulled out a handkerchief and began to scrub his waistcoat with warm water from the tap and a small bar of soap he found on the basin.   
  
Fortescue pretended not to notice the way that Mr. Short's eyes kept flitting to his bare chest and arms. _Definately a Mandrake_. The butler couldn't help but feel a bit, well... flattered, by the attention.   
  
Opportunities for one of Her Majesty's royal butlers to engage in... extra curricular activities, whatever their inclinations or preferences, were few and far between. And Mr. Neil Short was very young, with a smooth, pleasant face and a crop of thick dark hair and extraordinarily blue eyes that seemed to naturally crinkle at the corners...   
  
Fortescue was beginning to feel warm in a way that had nothing to do with the 'hand-dryer'.

  
He finished scrubbing the ice cream from his waistcoat and handed it to Mr. Short for drying. The young man glanced at him, and then blurted;  
  
“Listen, Mr. Fortescue, you're obviously a very nice... historical butler. I don't want you to get the wrong idea about me. I wasn't staring at you because I'm a _'Mandrake'_ -” Here the boy made the same bizarre finger quotation marks as he had done when talking to the Queen earlier, “-I just didn't expect a butler, with a powdered wig and everything, to be so big... I mean, solid... I mean, to have muscles...” Mr. Short now indicated Fortescue's bulky arms and shoulders, and then looked away quickly.   
  
Fortescue's feelings of warmth were now definitely directing themselves towards Mr. Short, the hopeless blushing boy.   
  
“Of course, Mr. Short.” He said, deadpan.   
  
“Oh, you can call me Neil...” The man replied eagerly.   
  
Fortescue studiously ignored this and began splashing his sticky chest with water from the basin, rubbing slowly at the remaining ice cream that trailed down his belly and disappeared into his midnight blue breeches.   
  
Perhaps he was being ruthless, but he scarcely had time to dally, he'd need to be getting back to her Majesty soon, and who knew when he'd get another opportunity?   
  
Mr. Short cleared his throat loudly enough to be heard over the hand-dryer.   
  
Though it served no practical purpose, as he was now fairly clean, Fortescue nevertheless rubbed over his own peaked nipples with one hand, even as the other hand skimmed under the waistband of his breeches.   
  
Mr. Short dropped the waistcoat, and the pretence of not looking at him.   
  
“No, really, I'm like, 80% straight... I...” The young man spluttered, and then gasped, “Oh!” as Fortescue walked him backwards out of the water closet and into the wall of the staff room opposite.   
  
He pinned Mr. Short against the wall with his lower body and couldn't fail to notice that both of Mr. Short's hands were already firmly clutching at his backside.   
  
He looked the nervous young man in the face, and Mr. Short's response was to flush quite beautifully again.   
  
“Alright, maybe I'm not _that_ straight...” He muttered, and then yelped a bit as Fortescue pressed his hips down harder.   
  
Fortescue found he rather liked that Mr. Short was so much smaller and skinnier than him. He put a large hand on each of Mr. Short's narrow, scrawny shoulders, and dipped his face down slowly. He paused just before their lips met, and the young man under him whimpered softly, eyes fluttering closed.   
  
Fortescue remembered what he himself had enjoyed as a young man. He took Mr. Short's plump bottom lip between his own lips and dragged his tongue across the delicate flesh. Wonderfully responsive, young Mr. Short shuddered. Fortescue bit down – not too hard, just enough to make the other man buck his hips forward needily.   
  
He released the swollen lower lip so that he could run gentle kisses down Mr. Short's long, straight nose, before plunging back down to his mouth. This time, when their lips met, Mr. Short opened wide and pushed his tongue into Fortescue's mouth.

  
They were kissing, tongues mangling, lips moving, kissing hard.   
  
Fortescue felt a long suppressed need inside himself awakening, as it always did during these few golden moments of opportunity. Neil Short with his very blue crinkly eyes and his straight nose and his soft mouth... Oh, his mouth...  
  
Fortescue panted up against it, and ran his long fingers up each side of Mr. Short's neck to tangle in his thick hair. But this was no good, they had to be quick, _quick_...  
  
With this in mind, he placed one strong thigh between Mr. Short's skinny ones, and pushed up firmly.   
  
To his eternal gratification, Mr. Short yelped.   
  
“Oh... Mr. Fortescue!”  
  
The lad was already stunningly erect against his thigh. He smiled against Mr. Short's lips, and gently murmured, “Shush...”  
  
Neil Short's hands were still cupping Fortescue's backside, and now they grasped harder and pulled him in to thrust upwards again. This time they both gasped, and Fortescue's own erection was pressing into Mr. Short's flat stomach.   
  
The boy at last began to move his hands, running them over Fortescue's sides and then dragging them up his broad back. To Fortescue's lasting surprise Mr. Short darted his head forward and placed his soft lips over his left nipple. And swirled his tongue, and sucked.   
  
Fortescue's back arched, and he ground himself up against Mr. Short's front, eyes rolling back in his head at the _glorious_ friction.  
  
Then Mr. Short bit down gently on his oh-so-sensitive nipple, and things became very urgent.   
  
Fortescue growled and pinned both of Mr. Short's wrists up above his head. He stooped so that he could fit their groins together, and he rolled his hips forward to grind their erect members against each other through layers of cloth.   
  
Mr. Short cried out wordlessly.  
  
Fortescue thrust upwards again and again and each stroke of their sheathed cocks was tortuously good. Mr. Short was sweating and panting beneath him, and really, Fortescue couldn't have asked for a more pliant and flattering partner.   
  
He pictured them both naked, with him thrusting inside Mr. Short, and the thought made him groan. With his strong arms Fortescue flipped Mr. Short so that he was pressed flat face-first against the wall. The young man made a lustful keening noise, so far-gone that he could protest nothing.   
  
Fortescue took in the wonderful sight of Mr. Short's small, round posterior through the seat of his trousers and felt a coil tighten somewhere in the region of his loins. He considered and quickly decided that remaining clothed was best, given their restraints of time and circumstance. He couldn't deny that the thought of the extra friction was also... somewhat pleasing.   
  
He grasped Mr. Short's hips and pulled them backwards, insinuating his erection between the lad's pert buttocks. Mr. Short gasped breathily, braced himself with his hands against the wall, and pushed his bottom out to meet Fortescue's cock.   
  
They moaned in unison. It was time to bring it to a close.   
  
With one hand gripping Mr. Short's hip, and the other firmly cupping the young man's erection through his trousers, Fortescue thrust forward and upward with an increasingly erratic snapping motion of his hips.   
  
Mr. Short was gloriously loud, half formed words spewing from him as they moved. But Fortescue could no longer really focus on anything but the chafing slide of his clothed cock between clothed buttocks. A tingling sensation was already beginning to form in the tips of his fingers when suddenly Mr. Short cried out.  
  
“Oh... Mr... Fortescue... I'm... I'm going to...”  
  
Fortescue felt the warmth and moisture of Mr. Short's release through his trousers and underwear. His cupping hand became damp and the all-pervading smell of ejaculate filled the room.   
  
As the young man trembled under him, Fortescue bucked his hips twice more, and...  
  
... _Finished..._  
  
He released without a sound, his seamen soaking the seat of poor Mr. Short's trousers, heart pumping, blood rushing in his ears.   
  
_I needed that. I really did._ Fortescue thought as he gasped for breath and placed a lingering kiss on the back of Mr. Short's sweaty neck.

 

Fortescue came down from his climax propped up with one hand against the wall so as to not completely smother the young man slumped beneath him.   
  
“Oh crikey...” Mr. Short was muttering between deep breaths. “I really am a Mandrake...”  
  
“There there,” Fortescue panted, squeezing Mr. Short's shoulder in what he hoped was a comforting manner, though at the same time he was thinking _you want to try deviating from the sexual norm in my time young man_.   
  
Still quivering slightly, Mr. Short turned around to face Fortescue, leaning back heavily on the wall.   
  
“Oh no, I mean... I really, er... I really like you... I mean, _it_! It, I really liked IT...”  
  
Neil Short was blushing horribly again, and Fortescue felt a wave of extreme fondness for the lad.   
  
He gave him a rather tender kiss on the mouth before turning away.   
  
“I'm afraid I shall have to make myself presentable and get back to Her Majesty forthwith. I'm already in for a severe scolding for being away from her this long.”  
  
“Oh, sorry...” Mr. Short cast his eyes around the room guiltily.   
  
Fortescue did his best to clean this second sticky substance from the inside of his breeches. He donned his stained shirt, and his rather damp but at least no longer soiled waistcoat, and tidied himself up by smoothing his wig. There, he thought, peering at himself in the small looking glass of the water closet. Not up to his usual standards, perhaps, but workably neat.   
  
He was reaching for his brocaded jacket when Mr. Short tapped him on the shoulder.   
  
“Look, sir, I've had an idea.” The lad brandished a small, shiny red bag at him. “Malteasers. They're chocolate, like the Queen wanted. OK, so technically they're not mine to give, they're Lisa's emergency stash, but I'd rather face an angry Lisa than an angry Queen Victoria, so here, take them...”  
  
Fortescue shrugged into his jacket and took the bag of 'Malteasers' from Mr. Short. Well then, here was a perfect excuse to give the Queen about where he'd been. Finding her some chocolate. Ideal.   
  
“Thank you... Neil.” He said appreciatively, and before he could leave, Mr. Short had tackled him and started kissing him again.   
  
As lovely as it really, _really_ was, Fortescue rather valued his position as Her Majesty's butler, so he reluctantly prised the young man off him.   
  
“I really do have to go now, young man.” He said as sternly as he could.   
  
Mr. Short's face lit up, as if with an idea.   
  
“I know, I'll go and find some more ice cream, and then I'll be able to come and see you again!” He said brightly.   
  
“Very well,” Fortescue sighed exaggeratedly, “But Mr. Short? Do clean yourself up first won't you?” He looked down pointedly to where a dark, sticky patch had appeared on the front of Mr. Short's red apron.   
  
“What? Oh, oh yeah, of course...” Mr. Short tilted his head awkwardly and ran a hand through his hair.   
  
As Fortescue made his way back to the Royal Box, he found himself fervently hoping that the young man located some more ice cream before the end of the concert.

 

 


End file.
